Bryce Brown threw both hands up straight over his head. Everyone on Auburn’s bench leaped to their feet. Austin Wiley turned incredulously toward the crowd cheering behind him, almost as if he was unsure about what he had just seen.

Jared Harper unleashed a yell you could probably hear all the way back on the Plains.

Auburn’s point guard is listed at 5-foot-11 and 175 pounds, which might be generous. But when he ran to his right around a Horace Spencer screen, drove to the basket and three down a thunderous dunk over 6-foot-7 Xavier forward Naji Marshall, there wasn’t anyone inside the Lahaina Civic Center in Maui who could call him small in that moment.

“I crossed it over, and I think they were supposed to switch or something like that, but they didn’t switch,” Harper said. “As soon as I knew they didn’t switch, I knew I was going to up and dunk the ball.”

The Tigers (ranked eighth in AP and No. 9 in USA Today men's basketball coaches poll) led the Musketeers by one with a little more than two minutes remaining in overtime. Harper’s dunk sparked an 88-79 victory that sends Auburn into the winner’s bracket at the Maui Invitational in Hawaii, where they No. 1 Duke (which blew out San Diego State 90-64) on Tuesday at 7 p.m. CT.

“There’s nothing else you can say except, ‘Na-na-na, Na-na-na,’” Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl said, mimicking ESPN’s SportsCenter noise. “That sucker’s going to be on plays of the week No. 1. For a 5-10, 5-11 guard to drive down the lane like that and throw the hammer down, you know, it’s just game over.”

The Tigers (4-0) outscored Xavier (2-2) 11-2 in the extra period, which included an 8-0 run to end the game. Harper and Brown scored five of those points each, and Chuma Okeke added one from the free-throw line.

That was a much different result than the end of regulation, where Auburn didn't score a single point over the final 2:20 to allow the Musketeers to erase a five-point deficit and tie the game with 26 seconds remaining.

Brown scored a game-high 26 points, and came up short on a 15-foot jumper for the win at the end of regulation, but it was the junior point guard who played the starring role. Harper scored 25 points on 9 of 17 shooting (3 of 9 from 3, 4 of 6 from the free throw line) to go along with eight assists, six rebounds and three steals.

The only negative on his line was five turnovers (two more than he had in Auburn’s first three games combine), but four of those came in the first half compared to one in the second half and overtime.

“Just knowing I had my teammates behind me, just their trust — they look for me to make big plays,” Harper said. “I worked hard this whole offseason to be able to be in that situation.”

Auburn transitioned Spencer from center (the position he played his first three seasons) to power forward going into this season, and there are still times, Pearl said, where the 6-foot-8 senior gets exposed on defense, especially on the perimeter.

Spencer went into the overtime period with two points (both free throws), four rebounds and nothing else.

But the senior was a game-changer over the final five minutes. Centers Wiley and Anfernee McLemore both fouled out in regulation, forcing Spencer back to his old position. He made the most of it with two crucial blocks — one against Tyrique Jones that kept Xavier from scoring the first points of the overtime period, and another against Paul Scruggs a little more than a minute later.

The Musketeers bench wanted a goaltending call after the second, but they didn’t get it. Harper’s dunk came on Auburn’s ensuing possession.

“During the game, he missed too many assignments. As a senior, he’s got to think through that,” Pearl said. “But I will say this: A lot of guys with lesser character would have been so upset that they had broken down as often as he did and had nothing left for overtime. Not with Horace. He stayed in the game, and we don’t win the game if he doesn’t get re-engaged like he was.”

Harper and Brown showed what kind of fireworks they were capable of Monday, combining to score 51 of the Tigers’ 88 points. But their effectiveness compared to others came at some expense — the former played 43 minutes, and the latter 42.

That’s a lot of run with two more games to play over the next two days.

But Pearl didn’t really have a choice but to keep them on the floor, both because of foul trouble and because the bench wasn’t providing much of a scoring punch. Between Spencer, Wiley, J’Von McCormick and Malik Dunbar, Auburn’s reserves scored only 16 points — barely more than half of what Xavier got.

Wiley scored 11 of those on 4 of 6 shooting before fouling out, showing plenty of effectiveness on the screen and roll. But Dunbar hit one 3, Spencer hit two free throws and McCormick didn’t attempt a shot in just five minutes on the court.

The lack of offense from players not named Harper and Brown (as well as foul trouble) played a role in Xavier being able to come back and tie the game at the end of regulation. Auburn scored only six points over the final four minutes — one 3 from each of its lead guards.

“I wasn’t happy with as much output as I got from the bench. We got outscored by their bench,” Pearl said. “We’re not very deep. J’Von’s got to be more of a factor us so he can play a little better, because again, that third game — it’s one thing to play a hard game in overtime, but Jared Harper and Bryce Brown played 42 minutes. That’s too much.”

Early in the second half, the ESPN2 broadcast showed a clip of Auburn coach Bruce Pearl imploring his team to “get a steal here.” The Tigers more than obliged.

Auburn went on a 9-2 run in the first three minutes after halftime. Seven of those points were scored off four steals — two from Samir Doughty, one from Brown and one from Okeke.

That was a theme throughout Monday’s game. Xavier committed 22 turnovers, 10 of which came on Auburn steals. The Tigers turned those turnovers into 31 points, which accounted for 35.2 percent of their scoring on Day 1 of the Maui Invitational.

Auburn also applied consistent pressure on the ball beyond the arc, which clearly bothered the Musketeers’ top scorers on the perimeter. Quentin Goodin went scoreless in the first half and finished the game with 13 points on an inefficient 3 of 19 shooting while committing seven turnovers. Marshall, the team's leading scorer coming into the game, also turned it over seven times and finished with just 10 points on 3 of 9 shooting.

Xavier’s only efficient scoring came on the interior, where big men Jones, Ryan Welage and Zach Hankins combined to score 35 points on 12 of 18 shooting.

So it wasn’t a perfect effort on the defensive end. The Musketeers shot 39.3 percent from the floor, made 10 of 27 attempts from beyond the arc (37 percent) and were bailed out by 23 Auburn fouls that led to 21 made free throws on 24 attempts.

Those free throws, as much as anything, allowed Xavier to hang with Auburn throughout the second half — it never led, but also didn't trail by more than seven points at any point during the final 13 minutes — and tie the the game in the final seconds of regulation.

But the Tigers’ pressure and ability to force turnovers helped them weather that storm.

“That was big-boy basketball,” Pearl said. “We beat a No. 1 seed from a year ago. That was one of the top four teams in the country with about five of those six kids back, and then add three grad transfers. Look, I’m just telling you — Xavier will compete for the Big East championship.

“I told the guys; we got to win two to have this to be a successful trip.”